Published

Mysterious Circumstances: Chapter 1

I was the one who discovered the body of my brother Andrew. It washed up on the Brough of Birsay causeway one morning in October, when the sky was red and the wind was sharp, too early for anybody but me to be there.

The ruined settlement on that tiny island had always spoken to me. I loved it even more than the mysterious Ring of Brodgar, or the Standing Stones of Stenness; even more than Maeshowe, where I had spent hours at a time watching for the fabled Hogboon; farmore than the legendary vanishing island belonging to the Finfolk, which for a few childish years I had hoped to find; more than thebeaches where seals basked in the summer and autumn, and I imagined the beautiful men and women within their skins, hiding there until we slept on Midsummer’s Eve.

As much as I loved all those stories, I had never actually found the proof. The Viking settlement, though, I knew to be real. Myconnection to it was real too; I was descended from the settlers on my mother’s side. When I found Andrew on the path to their village, a place I considered an old friend, it was hard to believe. He lay sprawled across my path, the blood almost washed from his face, a clear dent in his skull that marked the killing blow. At first, I blamed him. Whatever had killed him—demons, the sea and the rocks, the ghosts of our ancestors—it must have been due to his lack of care and respect. He used to swim miles out to sea and stay there long enough to make our mother think he’d drowned. He used to stay among the Viking ruins long after everyone else had gone and the causeway was barely visible beneath the churning waves. He used to laugh at Aunt Emma’s stories of ghosts and demons who had walked the islands for centuries.

“Haven’t you grown up yet, Karen?” he said once, when I tried to warn him. “You’re too old to still believe in ghosts and Finfolkand those mound-dwelling...whatever you call them.”

“Hogboons,” I said. “And I’m not too old to believe in high tide and sharp rocks and drowning and freezing, now, am I?”

I remembered such arguments as I stared at his lifeless body, but by the time I’d roused the occupants of the nearest house, cold tears were biting into my cheeks. I could barely speak. Eventually I got the farmer’s wife to call the police, but I couldn’t tell her why.

“She’s very upset,” she said. “Please just come, and we’ll try to get her talking.”

There was one other time that I knew of the police being needed for something serious, on these quiet and happy islands whereeverybody knows everybody. That was to do with my family as well. My Aunt Emma disappeared. They searched for days, and tried to track down family and friends she might have gone to, but there was no trace of her. At last it was decided she must have been killed and carried away by the sea, probably by accident, possibly not. The difference with Andrew was that he had been washed up,not away, so we knew he had died from a blow to the head. Well, there were plenty of those to be had in a rough sea. I accepted his death as an accident through all the time that my mother had to be dragged out of bed in the afternoons, forced to eat and remindedthat she still had me.

Then one day, she got up before I made her. She met me in the bathroom doorway, and said, “I’m sorry, pet. I’ll be normal for younow. Come down and I’ll make breakfast.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Of course I am.”​I sat at the kitchen table and watched her work, and for the first time in weeks, I had a moment to think. I wanted to talk as well. Noone had really talked to me about my brother’s death.

“Do you think it’s right?” I asked. “What they said about Andrew?”

“What do you mean?” Mum asked.

“That it was an accident...he was swimming or he slipped on the causeway or whatever.”

“It’ll do you no good to think such thoughts, Karen.”

“But I was thinking...honestly I was...what if it wasn’t an accident?”

“How could it be anything but?” said Mum. “Why would someone want to...to do that to your brother? And besides, you know what he was like.”

“Not all the time,” I said, “and definitely not at night. I don’t remember him doing anything dangerous in the dark, with no one around.”

“If no one was around,” my mother said, “how would anyone know what he was doing? Let it lie now, and eat your breakfast.”

I did as I was told, but I wasn’t satisfied. I chewed over my thoughts with my food until I was sure I knew what to say next.

“Why haven’t Finn and Uncle John been round?” I asked.

My mother stiffened. “You know Uncle John and I don’t get on.”

“Even so,” I said. “He’s your brother! And you like Finn. So do I. We went to see them when Aunt Emma went.”

“I’m nicer than John. I went to see him; he hasn’t come to see me.”

“I remember that. I remember thinking how strange it was. It was like they weren’t surprised she was gone. Uncle John didn’t even seem sad. Finn was sad, but he wasn’t surprised.”

“That was a long time ago,” said Mum. “More than half your lifetime. You can’t possibly remember how it really was.”

“I can,” I said. “Andrew thought the same thing. He told me.”

That was at least half a lie. Andrew hadn’t told me anything, but nor had he disagreed with me when I’d told him my thoughts all thoseyears ago. “And you thought so too. I know you did.”

“I thought no such thing,” said Mum. “If you must know, I wasn’t all that surprised myself.”

This was news to me. It seemed the most significant thing of all, and I was desperate to know more.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because John was a tyrant where Emma was concerned. You have no idea.”

“Then you don’t think she drowned? You think she ran away? But no one ever found her – not a trace of her!”

“She must have covered her tracks too well.”

“So you think she’s alive?” I asked. “And hiding?”

“Maybe.”

“But what about Finn? Mothers don’t leave their sons to tyrants.”

“Sometimes they do,” said Mum. “Anyway, John’s no tyrant to Finn. Not that I know of, anyway. Well, if Finn was being tyrannised, don’t you think he’d do something about it?”

“I think he’d come to see us if Uncle John would let him,” I said, “at a time like this.”

“Perhaps he’s waiting to be invited.”

“Can we?”

“Not yet,” said Mum. “I’m not ready, Karen.”

I didn’t believe her. I was suspicious of everyone, and I was sure my mother wanted to stop me from asking Finn and Uncle John questions. I’d always had questions about Aunt Emma, and now I had them about Andrew as well. I was becoming convinced that thesame thing had happened to both of them, and what had become of their bodies was entirely down to chance.